


Alice's Letter

by JK7



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-24
Updated: 2016-05-24
Packaged: 2018-06-10 10:06:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6952234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JK7/pseuds/JK7
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Half of Spock's family is human... and they love him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alice's Letter

Alice picked the letter up with hands that almost trembled. Ridiculous to be this excited about a letter she knew, but they were all she had of her family now. Alice held the letter before she opened it, trying to get some feel of the chid who had written it.  Her grandson, her only grandchild, was six years old and she had never seen him.  She looked forward to the letters and appreciated her son-in-law spending the extra to send the actual letter rather than a computer facsimile, but always they brought pain reminding her of just how different the child was.

Enough of that. Alice smoothed the letter open. It was written on thick paper with a traditional pen.  That, she knew, was her daughter. The monthly letter writing?  It could be her son-in-law.  Both family ties and age were respected in his… in their culture.

 

“ _Dear Grandmother,_

_How are you? I am well. Thank you for the birthday present. I liked the jumper.  It is a nice colour.”_

Certainly it was his mother who supervised the letter writing. His father would not have seen the logic in the thanks. Doubtlessly neither he nor the child could see any logic in the jumper.  Alice had known even as she knitted it that a jumper was unnecessary in their climate.  Alice knew it – but what do you give a child who doesn’t play?

 

“ _I am doing very well at school. Father has been helping me with my computer work.  I have sent you my newest program.”_

Alice paused. Wondered just what he did at school.  Perhaps she would ask next letter.  Maree Hudson down the road had a six year old granddaughter.  She brought home from kindergarten clay hand prints, finger paintings and clumsily crayoned words.  Alice looked at the only slightly childish handwriting of her grandchild and sighed.  He brought home computer printouts.  She read them, of course, and displayed them on the kitchen wall, but he had already passed her programming skills and she knew that secretly she envied her neighbours their brightly crayoned pictures.

 

“ _You won’t be able to understand it, but it sorts metal components by order of magnitude.”_

Alice smiled wryly. As tactful as his father.

 

“ _Mother gave me these photographs to send to you.”_

Alice had known that the larger envelope must contain photos, but had waited until now to open it. She spread the photos out and found that she had to wipe a mist of tears away before she could see them.  Sometimes, as now, she found herself hit by a rush of love for the child that almost frightened her in its intensity.  Even she knew it was illogical to love a child that could never return your love.  Alice shook her head as though to deny the pain and reached out for the photos again.  Somehow they emphasised the child’s differences.  It wasn’t just the child that was different but the world the photos revealed.  It was all completely foreign to Alice – the red soil, the strange coloured spiky leaved plants, even the light was harder.  Alice wondered if this was what the grandmothers of, say, the first Australian immigrants all those centuries ago had said.

And here a close-up where the child stared solemnly into the camera. Alice searched eagerly, even now, for a similarity to her child, his mother.  There was nothing.  The face that looked out at her wasn’t even human.  Her dressing table was covered in pictures of him but there were none in the living room.  At first she had tried, had displayed his baby photos as proudly as any grandmother, but even in her knitted layette with his ears safely hidden by the lacy bonnet the differences were obvious.

Some people hadn’t known where to look, others had stared. Most had groped for something to say but she had realised that they were repelled by the differences.  Alice wasn’t stupid.  She had taught history for years.  She knew what she was experiencing was a repetition of what had happened for centuries as different cultures met.  Always there had come intermarriage and always it was the children and, Alice thought wryly, the grandmothers who had suffered.  Once it had been Negroes, now as man’s boundaries spread it was aliens.

 

“ _You asked what I do when I am not in school. I play chess with Mother or Father.  Father is teaching me how to play the lyre.  I read a great deal.  Mother says that you gave her some of these books when she was a child.  It is good having some books one can hold and read and reread, rather than just computer tapes.  Sometimes Mother reads to me even though I can read to myself.  At the moment Mother is reading ‘Alice in Wonderland’ to me.  Mother makes it very interesting as she does lots of different voices.”_

Alice smiled happily. Perhaps her grandchild wasn’t as different as she had thought.  She wondered what his father thought of ‘Alice in Wonderland’.  Somehow ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and that quiet dignity didn’t seem to go together.  She made a mental note to go book shopping.  Alice was comforted to find her grandchild doing something so recognisably human and she was able to finish the letter with only a slight and passing regret for the ‘love and kisses’ with which other people’s grandchildren finished their letters.

 

“ _Live long and prosper,_

_Spock”_

 

**Author's Note:**

> This was written a very long, long time ago - it was my first piece of conscious fan fiction. It was originally published in Centero. If you know my name from back then, please don't mention it here. Grateful thanks to Gene Roddenberry and Nikki.   
> I hope my use of the words Negroes doesn't offend anyone. I've used it because in the historical period being spoken about, Negroes was a common term and the whole point is about people seeing differences rathe than similarities.


End file.
